September 13, 2012

Evans Lake (1)

On August 15th a friend and I hiked to Evans Lake in the Evans Lake Roadless Area, and a half mile or so above the trail head came across this old Cedar stump which still stands as a lonely and rather obscure piece of the history of the area. Its girth is around four feet and the springboard notches in it can still easily be seen. (Loggers in those days cut springboard notches into which they could insert springboards which then could be used as platforms, allowing the loggers to stand and use their cross-cut saws to cut higher-up the base of the tree where the trunk is narrower.)

In the later part of the 1800’s gold strikes in the Coeur d’Alene Mountains of eastern Idaho were attracting miners from all over the west. In 1883-1884 a road was built up Prospect Creek from the present day town of Thompson Falls Montana which sits beside the Clark Fork of the Columbia River to the foot of the Montana-Idaho divide as access to those Idaho mines. Along that road at Evans Creek, a way-station called Mountain House was built to accommodate those who travelled that road, but it burned in the late 1880s and was not rebuilt. My guess is that this tree was cut and used in the building of that house.

I love learning the history of our areas…and wonder what that tree would tell us if it could. I’ve seen photos of the hillsides in our canyons here with tree stumps that are about six feet in height…the captions said that the trees were cut in the deep of winter when the snow was piled high…loggers would cut them to the “usual” height…which was that much higher because of the deep mountain snows….

Snow does add a dimension to things, doesn’t it. Sometimes in late winter or early spring when I’m hiking on the top of several feet of snow I’m glad that those who blazed the trails put the blaze marks so high. In summer they are way above my head, in winter by my feet.

I found it so. That sight will slowly go away, replaced by the havoc wreaked by modern feller-bunchers, yarders and skidders leaving hardly anything still standing. The areas logged now by Plum Creek Timber on their holdings look like a battlefield.

I have used them and rather enjoyed doing it, but not on timber of that size! I worked for the Forest Service during the summer of 1960 and we were trained to use the crosscut. Fortunately we had chain saws on the fires though.

Recently, I watched a video of loggers felling a tree. Of course they were using chainsaws, but the process you describe was being followed, and the man with the saw was several feet above the ground. His skill was unbelievable – and by the time the tree was down, I was exhausted!

I can’t get upset about this kind of artifact. To my mind, it’s a reminder of a time when resources were used more purposefully. It’s rather the same as on a farm. It’s easy for city-dwellers to wish none of the cute animals would land on the dinnertable, but we do need to eat. The problems come with operations driven purely by profit and with no regard for the process. There’s a connection between clear-cutting and overcrowded chicken houses – or so it seems to me. Anyway – wonderful stump, wonderful photo!

I agree. This tree was cut and used for a purpose, not a profit, and selectively at that. I have big problems with companies like Plum Creek Timber that cut everything in an area. Here, they are now cutting timber and sawing it to metric dimensions for shipment to China. To my way of thinking that is dead wrong!

And then after they “liquidate” the good timber, they sell the land for recreational properties! And most of the land Plum Creek holds was the result of government land grants to the railroads to encourage their expansion westward more than 100 years ago. Seems like a corruption of the original purpose, doesn’t it?